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It's not just that the West risks upsetting Israel by signing a poor nuclear deal with Iran, warned a French lawmaker at the weekend, insisting that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will follow through on his threat to attack the Islamic Republic.

According to Israel's Channel 2 News, French parliamentarian Meyer Habib urgently phoned his nation's foreign minister as the latter was taking part in talks between Iran and Western powers in Geneva. Habib's message was clear: "I know Netanyahu. If you don't toughen your positions, [he] will attack Iran."

Netanyahu and most other Israeli officials view the deal currently on the table between Western powers and Iran as woefully insufficient, as it does not require Tehran to dismantle a single centrifuge and leaves the Islamic Republic very much capable of building nuclear weapons in the future.

Israel has repeated stated that it cannot allow Iran to go nuclear, or to possess the ability to go nuclear.

These are not idle threats, said Habib. Western powers must "toughen our positions in order to prevent war," he reported told French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius.

It was shortly after that reported phone call that France is said to have "thrown a wrench" in the negotiations. Talks stalled on Sunday, with both sides agreeing to meet again later in the month.

It was not the first time France has directly warned the international community that Israel is deadly serious about preventing Iran from attaining nuclear weapons.

In early 2010, former French President Nicolas Sarkozy repeated cautioned that failure to take action by the West would lead to war between Israel and Iran.

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